


Daydream Believer

by perdiccas



Category: Under The Dome (TV)
Genre: Canon Alternate Reality, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Outside The Dome, The Hounds of Diana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-14 00:10:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perdiccas/pseuds/perdiccas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Chester's Mill to Marrakesh and everything in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Daydream Believer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OhWilloTheWisp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhWilloTheWisp/gifts).



The Sweet Briar Rose bustles with people. 

When the dome shattered, soldiers had swarmed the town. A couple of hours later, most of them had gone. The ominous black suited men with poker faces, though, they’d stuck around. The unobtrusive government contractors, too: surveyors, town planners, people in hard hats who are easy trust. Half of Zenith has to be here. Everyone wants a looky-loo. 

Pockmarked around the diner, Hunter spots a couple of fellow survivors. People like him, who’d skipped out on the wake when the concentrated grief became too much. They keep their heads down and themselves to themselves. Hunter looks away if they catch his eye. He doesn’t feel like talking. Not with so many unfamiliar ears straining to listen in.

More unsettling than the sudden influx of out-of-towners is the newly working espresso machine. 

It’s not that Hunter misses the thick, bitter tar that passed for coffee when their supplies dwindled but the stuff the temporary barista is slinging tastes unreal. He was under the dome for less than a week but it’s like his taste buds had atrophied from stress all the same. He feels like he’s tasting coffee for the first time, only it’s a thousand times better than he remembered it could be.

Sometime after the funeral but before he’d hightailed it out of the wake, Hunter had tried to explain it to someone. Someone who’d cared enough to make the journey to pay their last respects, but who wasn’t close enough to anyone they’d buried today to be a bawling, sniffling mess. He’d nodded along solemnly when Hunter talked but it was pretty clear he didn’t understand. He acted like it was some totally normal reaction to the circumstances, like Hunter had PTSD in his tongue. 

It’s not just the taste, though. The coffee smells better, richer, more nuanced. The cup feels warmer in his hands. The more Hunter’s brain tries to ferret out what’s going on with his senses, the more he starts to second guess himself. Maybe it _is_ all in his head. Gazing out the window, he spots Barbie hauling a duffle bag, making double quick time down the street. 

Hunter is more than happy to abandon his perplexing, half drunk cappuccino and run after him. 

“Hey...” The greeting trails off when the wind is knocked out of him. Barbie’s forearm crushes his chest, pinning him against a brick wall. Hunter grins. “I thought we’d moved on from this stage of our relationship,” he wheezes. 

Barbie doesn’t ease up even a little. “And I thought I told you to stop following me.”

“Yeah well,” Hunter says, pushing back against Barbie, trying to straighten up, “I wouldn’t have to follow you if you bothered to tell me where you were going once in a while.”

Barbie looks exhausted. “I’m leaving,” he says.

“What, already?” 

“Yeah, I’ve got to get out of here.”

He steps back, the arm he’d been holding Hunter in place with going limp at his side. It’s a disconcerting feeling, to have been pushing against an immovable force that suddenly isn’t there. Hunter stumbles forward, catching himself before he goes headlong back into Barbie. “Where are you going to go?”

“Somewhere. Anywhere.” Barbie shrugs distractedly. “As long as it’s far away it doesn’t matter.”

All of a sudden, Barbie focuses intently on him. In a low, quick voice, he says, “Look, Hunter, this town is swarming with government men. You might think we’re in the clear because Aktaion hasn’t shown up, but the only plausible reason my father isn’t here, turning up the heat to figure out what happened, is if he’s putting out bigger, more devastating fires somewhere else. Whatever deal you had with him is going to be null and void to whoever comes along next. You should get out too, while you can.” 

“Way ahead of you,” Hunter replies, nonchalantly pulling two fake IDs out of his pocket and flashing them in front of Barbie’s face. 

He frowns. “What the hell is that?”

“Our ticket to somewhere, anywhere, so far away none of this will matter ever again.” Hunter rolls his eyes at Barbie’s suspicious expression. “There’s more where these came from: passports, visas, travel arrangements, all courtesy of the Hounds of Diana.”

Barbie squares his shoulders and crosses his arms. “And the catch is, you get to tag along?”

Hunter laughs. “If you sound any more sceptical about it, I might have to be offended.”

“Hunter—” Barbie starts in a serious tone but Hunter cuts him off.

“You said it yourself, you need to leave, I need to leave, so let’s make like a couple of trees and leave together.” He sobers a little. “You got me in here. Let me repay the favour and get you out.”

Barbie tilts his head, his jaw clenched as he thinks it through. “You need time to pack?” 

Hunter shakes his head, grabbing his backpack from the ground where it had fallen. “I’m leaving with what I came in with.” He pulls out a set of car keys and dangles them from the end of his finger. 

“You wanna drive or—”

Barbie grabs the keys before he can finish his sentence.

 

With the dome down, word of Aktaion’s shady dealings hits the news. From a hotel room in Lisbon, Hunter and Barbie watch as their stock plummets. The more information comes out, the more the Hounds of Diana start to make a name for themselves. They hit the headlines as the voice of a people sick of corporate corruption. Trevor, still holed up in a Zenith basement, keeps Hunter in the loop as more people ask to join. As more people ask for help. 

It starts with an anonymous tip (Hunter takes it, hacks and releases confidential documents in Munich – proof of industrial espionage) but it quickly escalates. He and Barbie hop from country to country, following leads, changing identities as often as they change their underwear. In Slovenia, they bust a string of factories for sweatshop labour. Figuratively, with a data dump to the media and literally, when Barbie kicks in their CEO’s door. Hunter’s daily routine now involves a lot more guns than it ever did in Chester’s Mill. 

By the time they end up in Mexico, Barbie has worked his way through the denial, anger and bargaining stages of grief. Stuck in a Mexican border town waiting on intel, he mopes around the motel room. He seems to have settled permanently on depression. 

There’s an arms deal going down and soon - Hunter knows that for sure - but the when and where and how much money will be changing hands is harder to pin down. He scans the scrolling lines of green text on the computer screen in front of him. Nothing.

“We’re wasting time,” Barbie grumbles.

Hunter ignores him. Barbie can’t sit still for longer than a weekend these days before he gets some sort of itchy trigger finger withdrawal syndrome. Hunter is more irritable too. He wants to blame it on Barbie’s constant pacing, up and down the length of the room, wearing a rut in the carpet while Hunter tries to work, but there’s more to it. Something is making him jumpy. Maybe the cabin fever is getting to him too. He pushes aside the uneasy feeling in his stomach. The men they’re trying to track down are serious bad news. One of them has to keep a cool head.

The computer beeps.

A chat window pops up with a message from Trevor: 

_5557890 make manuel an offer_  
_might not be legit_  
_be careful_

“Finally,” Barbie says, reading over Hunter’s shoulder. He already has his cell phone out.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Hunter tries to stop him dialling. “We have no idea what we’re getting into—”

Barbie holds up his hand to shush him: the other end of the line picks up. 

 

Barbie sets up a meeting at a local restaurant. Hunter sits in the car in a back alley with his laptop open on the passenger seat. The place only has one surveillance camera, pointed right at the register. Hunter hacks into the city grid instead. Through a traffic cam across the street, he gets a low-res bead on Barbie seated at a table by the window.

Over his earpiece, Hunter hears Barbie talking to the waitress. He orders coffee in stilted high school Spanish. 

“Incoming,” Hunter says when three burly guys rock up.

He’s watching the grainy footage intently. He isn’t prepared when the backdoor of the car suddenly opens. Before he can hit the gas and floor it out of the alleyway, he feels the cold metal of a gun pressed against the back of his neck.

Hunter must have gasped or yelped in surprise because he can see Barbie react on screen. In the seconds it takes for the gunman to climb into the car, Hunter reaches over and yanks a USB stick from the laptop. It cuts the feed. He drops it out of sight, just as the backdoor shuts. In the rear-view mirror, he meets the eyes of a well dressed man with slicked back hair.

Hunter should have seen this coming. There was no way the heavies talking to Barbie were the brains behind this operation.

Slick cocks his gun.

“Drive,” he says, in impeccable English. 

 

They drive for about forty-five minutes, picking up an escort at the outskirts of town. The beater tails them through the dusty, deserted roads. Slick is pretty polite for a guy who is probably going to kill him. Hunter can give him credit for that. When they get to their destination – a large ominous barn nestled behind a chain link fence with nothing else for miles around – he treats Hunter to the most thorough, if surprisingly respectful, pat-down of his life.

The second car pulls up and a couple of thugs spill out. 

“Take him inside,” Slick orders. They hustle to make it happen.

The barn is cavernous. On the far side, men are packaging bricks of heroin. If Hunter wasn’t currently being manhandled by goons, he’d kick himself. Drugs for guns. That’s the deal they’ve been chasing. There never was any money changing hands. They’d overplayed their hand the minute Barbie started talking dollar amounts on the phone. Trevor was right, they should have been more careful.

Hunter is seated at a coffee table. Slick takes the chair opposite. He snaps his fingers and a flunky places two steaming hot cups between them. 

“You work for the American DEA, hm?” He shakes his head and corrects himself. “No, not the DEA. They work in teams. You and your partner work alone. That’s not so smart when you’re sticking your nose into other people’s business.” 

He leans back in his seat and takes a long drag of coffee. He raises an eyebrow. Hunter grabs the second scalding hot cup and puts his lips to it, not quite drinking. 

“You have money. You want guns,” Slick explains. “But as you can see, the guns are already under contract. So now, you and your partner will pay me the money and perhaps we will work something out.”

Hunter starts to speak but Slick holds up his hand to silence him. “No need for excuses. You are not the negotiator. I understand.”

While Hunter tries to work out what the hell that means besides ‘shut up’, Slick puts his coffee cup down, stands and straightens his tie. He takes a step closer to Hunter and smacks him across the face with his gun. 

The cup Hunter was holding shatters on the floor. Burning hot coffee splatters over his leg. Bright, breathtaking pain radiates through his jaw where he’s hit. He gasps and struggles but the goons have him pinned in place. 

“I will speak with your partner when he arrives,” Slick says coolly. To his men: “Clean this up.”

 

They string Hunter up by his wrists. He’s hoisted up until only the tips of his toes touch the floor. Every time he’s punched in the stomach he loses his balance, every part of his body screaming from the pain. 

Maybe Hunter is screaming too.

There’s a lull in the beating when Slick’s cell phone rings. He steps away to take the call. Hunter manages to get his balance back. One of the thugs holds a water bottle to his mouth and pours. Hunter gulps what he can. The rest drips down his chin. He draws in a ragged breath and spits blood on the floor. 

Slick comes back. He leaves his cell phone on the coffee table.

“That was my associate, Manuel,” he says sombrely. “It seems there has been a change of plan. Your partner has killed two of my men and gravely injured Manuel. The time for negotiation is over.” 

He looks at Hunter almost regretfully. 

“I’m sorry,” he says as he raises his gun and takes aim. “But this is business.”

Hunter flinches. His eyes close. He hears the crack of the gun firing. 

There’s a yelp of pain. This time, it doesn’t come from him.

He opens his eyes. Slick is on the floor in a pool of blood. He has a bullet hole in his head.

All hell breaks loose.

The workers in the back scatter, hiding behind the stacks of drugs, screaming for mercy. The goons grab their guns and duck for cover. A team of men in black body armour rushes the barn. Hunter feels arms around him, someone supporting his weight as they cut through the rope holding him up.

Hunter squints through the blood and sweat stinging his eyes. “Barbie?” 

“Right here,” he confirms, just before the rope snaps.

Hunter drops like a sack of potatoes. A second man, someone Hunter doesn’t recognise, is there to help Barbie catch him. Together, they throw Hunter’s arms over their shoulders, helping him, mostly dragging him, out of the crossfire. 

Barbie’s men have surprise on their side. Hunter can honestly say he’s never been more surprised. But it’s obvious they’re outnumbered.

“Fall back!” Barbie orders, urging the rest of the team to follow.

In the open space outside, Hunter hears the deafening roar of a helicopter before he can see it. It whips up the loose sand as it descends, hovering just above the ground. Barbie puts a hand on Hunter’s head protectively. He forces him to keep down, out of the deadly path of the rotor blades as they approach. It’s like walking into a hurricane. 

The people inside the helicopter and outside the helicopter join forces, pulling and shoving and hauling Hunter inside. Someone straps an oxygen mask to his face while someone else cuts his t-shirt open to get at his wounds. All around him, the rest of Barbie’s men load up. The last person scrabbles inside and they’re ascending even before Barbie has finished sliding the heavy door shut. 

The helicopter jerks once, then twice, as pot shots zing off the windows and then straightens out. They’re already too far away for Slick’s remaining men to hit them again.

“Hey,” Barbie says as he crouches down beside Hunter. He’s trying to keep his voice light, but it shakes. “How’s it going?”

Hunter tries to smile and gets about halfway. Barbie shifts the breathing mask a little so Hunter can talk. “I don’t want to stroke your ego,” he wheezes, “but I’m pretty glad to see you.”

He winces when an IV is put into his arm. Whatever Barbie says next, Hunter doesn’t catch it before the meds take hold.

 

It takes Hunter a while to fight through the fog of waking up. When he does, he opens his eyes to an unfamiliar room. Gingerly, he props himself up on his elbows. (It doesn’t hurt half as bad as he thought it would.) The curtains are open but he can’t see anything through the window that he recognises, at least not in the low, dusky light. 

He turns toward the _clack clack_ sound of someone typing, someone with nowhere near the words per minute Hunter clocks.

“You’d better not be looking at porn,” he says. His voice is still rough from sleep. “I’m serious,” he insists as Barbie looks at him, poker faced, backlit with the blue glow from the laptop. “I don’t need a dozen hot singles in our area trying to get into my pants... Speaking of areas, where are we, exactly?”

Barbie doesn’t answer. He hasn’t even cracked a smile. He watches Hunter’s slow, careful movements toward getting out of bed. His eyes have an intensity that he probably doesn’t mean to be as unnerving as it is. 

Probably. 

Hunter stands and stretches. He takes two steps closer to Barbie and, sick of his silence, fakes a stumble. 

Barbie jumps. 

Hunter straightens up and grins at him. “Just kidding. I’m fine.”

To prove it, he wiggles his ass and does the moonwalk. 

“You’re a dick.” Barbie scowls and throws himself back into the desk chair.

“Yeah, you’re not the first person to mention that. But seriously, the strong and silent thing was getting old.” 

Hunter makes it the rest of the way to the desk. He leans against the back of Barbie’s chair to get his breath back. Maybe he’s not in as great shape as he’d like to be. 

Before Hunter can read anything over his shoulder, Barbie closes the laptop. Hunter blinks as his eyes adjust to the darkness. “I knew you were watching porn,” he says. And then, “You gonna tell me where we are, or what?”

“You could have died.”

It’s the last thing Hunter expects hear. Death is an occupational hazard. They don’t talk about stuff like that. He tries to shrug it off. “What? Doing the ol’ soft shoe shuffle back there? Not a chance.”

“Christ, Hunter,” Barbie finally barks, in one lithe, angry movement standing and turning to face him. “You know what I mean.”

“What do you want me to say?” Hunter snaps back. He leans a little harder on the chair. His body feels heavy, every ache he thought he didn’t have is now throbbing from the tension in the room. “I was there. I know what happened. It sucked. But I’m fine.”

Barbie huffs a humourless, disbelieving laugh. He shrugs his shoulders in defeat. 

“Texas.”

Hunter frowns. “What?”

“You asked where we were,” Barbie says flatly. “We’re in Texas.”

Hunter reels. They’d been doing well, staying under the radar but if they were back in America, it was only a matter of time before Aktaion would pick up their trail. Unless... Hunter makes eye contact with Barbie again, taking in his resigned expression. Unless they’d already found them.

His pulse races. He squints at the corners of the room, along the top of the bookshelf, at the ends of the curtain rail. Instinctively, he touches the side of his head to adjust his glasses but he isn’t wearing them. He frowns. When did he lose them? Mexico? All the way back in Chester’s Mill? It doesn’t matter. He shakes himself. Nothing he’s looking at is blurry anyway; the whole room is just too damn dark.

He goes to the nearest wall, quicker than his body would have preferred. His ribs are screaming at him but he ignores it. He runs his fingers along the doorjamb, searching for bugs and hidden cameras his eyes can’t see. 

Barbie says his name. 

“What?” Hunter grunts. 

He wonders why he’s bothering. He’s been on the other side of Aktaion’s surveillance equipment. If Barbie made a deal with the devil to get them out of Mexico, there’s someone watching them, laughing right now. He would be.

“Hunter, stop.”

This time, Barbie is right behind him. Literally. Hunter can feel his breath on the back of his neck when he talks. He turns around.

Barbie flicks on the lights. 

“Fuck.” Hunter squeezes his eyes closed in pain. His hands fumble. He’s disoriented. Barbie grabs him before he can hurt himself and presses him carefully against the wall, holding him in place. 

Hunter slaps him on the shoulders, blindly trying to push Barbie away but he doesn’t move. Warily, Hunter blinks his eyes open in increments until the pain subsides.

“Okay?” Barbie asks in a low voice.

Hunter lets his head fall back, thumping softly against the wall. “Just peachy,” he mutters.

“I knew you wouldn’t like this,” Barbie says quickly, “but what was I supposed to do? We were in cartel territory with a target on our backs. If we didn’t get over the border, we’d be dead. You’d be dead.”

“You think spending the next decade in lock up is going to be any better?” Hunter snaps. 

Barbie’s eyebrows pinch together in confusion. 

Hunter rolls his eyes. “I know he’s your dad and all but do you really think this was a mission of mercy? We fucked him over. Aktaion couldn’t care less if we died in an arms deal gone bad unless they need us for something and I’m gonna guess that something smells a lot like payback.”

“Aktaion has no idea we’re here.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.”

“An emergency border crossing? En route medical attention? The notably non-descript motel room on a notably non-descript street? Jesus, Barbie, the Hounds of Diana don’t have the resources for this. It has Aktaion written all over it. I’m the one who used to hack what needed to be hacked to get this kind of shit done, remember?”

“It’s not Aktaion.” Barbie takes his phone out of his back pocket and pulls up a series of messages. He holds it up for Hunter to read.

It’s not... well, it’s not the Aktaion protocol Hunter remembers. It’s not the messaging service he remembers, either, nor the code words or case numbers. He wavers, unsure. Wouldn’t it make sense for Aktaion to overhaul everything after the dome came down, and he and Barbie disappeared? They’d want to close every backdoor Hunter left in the system. Just because it’s not the Aktaion he knew doesn’t mean it isn’t them.

He studies Barbie’s phone suspiciously. “What am I looking at?”

“A favour,” Barbie says. “I called in a favour from some old army buddies of mine. This isn’t about Aktaion, okay? I had my own insurance policy. Made sure I had an exit plan.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You were working with my dad once, Hunter. I couldn’t risk...”

“You didn’t trust me?” Hunter blurts out indignantly, a little hurt. He ignores the fact that Barbie has a point.

“A minute ago you were accusing me of doing the same thing!”

“Yeah, well,” Hunter mumbles, “if I’d known you had a roving band of Rambos at your beck and call then I wouldn’t have had to jump to conclusions.” 

He slumps against the wall. The adrenaline is already starting to wear off. He feels tired. He stops trying to shove Barbie away and lets him hold him up. “I guess this makes us even. Now what?”

“That 911-call was a one-time deal. Next time we won’t have an out. We can’t keep doing this,” he clarifies. “I nearly got you killed.”

“You weren’t the one with a gun in my face,” Hunter scoffs. 

“They never would have got that close if I hadn’t walked us into a trap.”

“You got us airlifted right back out again,” Hunter retorts. He tries to change the subject. “So now what?”

Barbie shrugs. “We stick around here for a bit. Recuperate.”

“And then what?” Hunter pushes. “Stick around until Aktaion _does_ catch up to us?”

“No, we do this the right way.” 

Barbie fiddles with his phone again, flipping to some corporate looking website.

“Private security?” Hunter reads aloud. “I don’t think I’d make a very good bodyguard...”

“Me either,” Barbie laughs. “But this is more like...” 

He brings up a different page.

“More like being a mercenary?”

“It’s not like what you’re thinking.” Barbie says quickly. “They contract out to NGOs and non-profits, people working in war torn areas. People who need protection to do their jobs. It’s what we’ve been trying to do all this time,” he insists, “but with teams of back up and benefits and we don’t need fake IDs to do it. Aktaion won’t be able to get to us out there.”

“Benefits, eh?” Hunter laughs. He gestures to what feels like a bitching bruise on his jaw. “Are you telling me you want to go legit for the health insurance?”

“Hunter—” Barbie starts in a stern tone but Hunter cuts him off before he gets another guilt ridden lecture.

“Chillax. I’ll do it. Sign me up.” And then, more seriously, “You worry too much. But thank you. You know, for getting me out of there.”

Barbie exhales a long breath, giving Hunter a lopsided half-smile in reply. 

Hunter grins slyly. “I knew you liked me.”

It breaks the moment. 

Barbie rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“No?” Hunter teases.

“Definitely not.” 

Barbie steps back, letting Hunter regain some personal space. Maybe it’s whatever meds are left in his system, or just all the sudden good humour in the air, but Hunter leans forward, closing the gap between them right back up. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he says quietly.

“Oh yeah?” Barbie plays along, leaning in even more to hear what Hunter has to say.

“I like you too.” 

He turns his head to the side and Barbie’s mouth is right there. Hunter kisses him like he does everything else: without thinking about the consequences. For a second, Barbie’s hands hesitate at Hunter’s sides, and then he grabs him gently by the hips, not to push him away but pulling him in tighter.

When Barbie kisses Hunter back, his lips part for Hunter’s tongue. Hunter feels a hungry, heady rush of hormones that makes it hard for him to catch his breath. He rocks up on the balls of his feet, his chest pressed to Barbie’s. One of Barbie’s legs slides between his and his lips burn where he kisses across Barbie’s stubble. 

It feels amazing and everything hurts. Hunter never wants to stop touching Barbie. He never wants to stop being touched but the longer he stands with his arms around Barbie’s neck and his hands buried in Barbie’s hair, the sharper the pain in his ribs become as he pants between kisses. The bruise on his jaw throbs in time to the thrum of his pulse. 

He doesn’t want to - _god_ , how he doesn’t want to – but Hunter pulls back. He puts his hands on Barbie’s chest and stops him when he tries to follow.

Barbie’s earlier stoicism is gone. Hunter can read his face like an open book. Confusion. Hurt. Disappointment. 

“Let me guess,” he says, like he’s resigned to having fallen for another one of Hunter’s dumb pranks. “You were just foolin’ around?”

Hunter grabs him by the buckle of his belt. Barbie inhales sharply. Hunter pulls him close again and laughs. 

“Oh, we’re going to _fool around_ , alright,” he promises. His voice is heavy and rough with the thought of everything that involves. 

When Barbie tries to kiss him again, though, Hunter ducks his head. Sheepishly, he adds, “But we gotta make this a horizontal experience. You know, before I fall over.”

Barbie’s eyes open wide with concern. 

“Maybe we shouldn’t...”

“Yes, we should.” 

Firmly, with his hand still on Barbie’s belt, Hunter pushes him in the direction of the bed.

Hunter is still in the t-shirt and pyjama pants he woke up in. Barbie’s hands are warm and solid as they slide up his sides. His touch skims gently over the bruises on Hunter’s ribs, helping him out of his shirt. 

In return, Hunter goes for the hem of Barbie’s t-shirt with one hand and starts tugging at his belt buckle with the other, but Barbie nudges him backwards until the backs of his knees press against the bed frame. 

“Lie down,” he says. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Yeah, okay,” Hunter agrees. He gives himself up to gravity, falling softly on the mattress with only a ghost of an ache in his bones when he bounces. 

Barbie strips out his t-shirt quickly but slows down when he catches Hunter watching him. He takes his time unbuckling his belt and dragging his zipper down. He’s hard. Hunter is too. He swears it hasn’t been that long since he last got laid but right now, he can’t remember ever being this turned on.

He can’t help himself. He rubs his palm lazily over his pyjama pants. The flannel is soft against his skin. Involuntarily, his hips buck up as he touches himself, watching Barbie’s eyes go dark as they follow the movement of his hand.

Barbie steps out of his jeans and kicks them away, stretching out over Hunter as he joins him on the bed. It’s almost unbearable in the best possible way: the heat of Barbie’s lean, taut body braced above him; the taste of salt on Barbie’s skin as Hunter kisses him wherever his mouth can reach; the feel of Barbie’s hand joining his between his legs.

Hunter groans. His hips roll up to meet Barbie’s palm as his own hand falls away. He grabs at Barbie’s hip instead. He tries to pull their bodies closer, to grind against him, but Barbie slips his hand into Hunter’s pants. 

Hunter tips his head back against the sheets. With an open mouth, he pants heavily and his back arches. Barbie’s hand curls around him, matching the erratic rhythm of his thrusts. 

“Please,” Hunter moans. “Don’t stop.”

Barbie’s mouth presses to his in reply, and Hunter comes, blindsided by the force of it.

 

The second time must be the charm because Hunter is alert almost as soon as he wakes up. Well, as alert as he ever is when he wakes up. He rolls out of bed with a grace that he definitely didn’t have yesterday.

“Morning,” Barbie says. 

He’s at the computer again, eating breakfast, but leans back in his chair when Hunter gets up. He gives him an approving once over as he walks past, Hunter’s pyjama pants slung almost indecently low on his waist.

“Morning,” Hunter replies. He touches Barbie’s shoulder briefly as he passes him on the way to the bathroom.

On the counter, Hunter finds three orange prescription bottles. He grabs a pill from each and downs them. He doesn’t know what kind of black market drugs Barbie’s contacts have access to but he thanks anyone and everything he can think of that they do. 

It seems impossible, but the deep purple bruise that spanned most of his chest yesterday has already faded. The lingering, twisting pain when he breathes is gone altogether. He can barely see a mark on his jaw, under his five-o-clock shadow. He shakes his head and stops trying to figure it out – so maybe he’ll grow a third arm from taking untested military drugs, he’ll worry about it later – and finishes up in the bathroom instead.

Hunter kisses Barbie with minty fresh breath. While he’s distracted, he swipes the half eaten bowl of cereal from under his nose.

“Hey!” Barbie grouses, when they finally break apart. 

Hunter flops into the chair beside him and eats. Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that. He nods his head toward the computer. Between big, remorselessly crunchy bites he asks, “What’s that?”

Barbie angles the laptop so it’s easier for him to see the screen. “Our assignment. For when you’re all healed up.”

“Marrakesh?” Hunter reads aloud. “Sounds like a blast.”


End file.
